Tag Archives: philadelphia 76ers job openings

For three years the 76ers took a dive, intentionally fielding inept teams in an effort to lose as many games as possible

The Curmudgeon has made his feelings known about the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team in this space on more than one occasion and will spare you all but the highlights: a lifelong fan of the team, he now roots for it to lose every game by a score of 100-0 in front of no paying spectators because for three years the organization intentionally fielded the worst team it possibly could. If you’d like to know more about it, you can check it out here and here.

Last week saw something new and, as far as The Curmudgeon can tell, unprecedented: the 76ers fired Bryan Colangelo, the team’s president and general manager (the latter being the position that makes all of the personnel decisions), because, according to the official investigators’ report, his wife employed five – five! – anonymous Twitter accounts to post negative things about the team and its players. The story they’re telling, and apparently planning to stick to, is that Mrs. Colangelo heard this stuff over dinner or as pillow talk and took to Twitter entirely on her own to stand by her man. Surely no one believes this: the common assumption appears to be that Mr. Colangelo did all this himself, or directed his wife to do it. Some damning evidence: when team-employed investigators requested her phone to determine whether it was the source of the tweets in question they discovered that it undergone a factory reset and its memory had been wiped completely clean.

Because nothing says “I didn’t do it” like deleting everything from your phone.

Tweeted himself out of a job

So the 76ers fired Mr. Colangelo, who was hired when the team decided it was time to start actually trying to win basketball games. The Curmudgeon refuses to watch the team – he’ll become a fan again the day the despicable people who currently own the team sell it – but from afar he gets the sense that Mr. Colangelo had done a reasonably good job. The thinking now, however, is that even pretending that his wife was the miscreant, not him, no one in the basketball world is going to be able to trust him or be willing to do business with him – not players, not players’ agents, and not executives of other teams – so he would no longer be able to do the job for which he was hired.

So last Friday the 76ers said “Buh-bye, Bryan.”

The Curmudgeon has one other piece of 76ers business to bring to you, but it comes not from his anger over their disgraceful actions but out of laughter at something he ran across recently in a most unexpected place: LinkedIn.

The Curmudgeon isn’t much of a fan of the LinkedIn web site. He’s there because, as is the case with Facebook, he just thinks he probably needs to be there, but that’s it. With Facebook at least there’s some entertainment value as you get to follow the exploits of people you haven’t seen in a hundred years or those who revolve around the periphery of your life and about whom, in many cases, you don’t give a damn. LinkedIn doesn’t even offer that: you get more entertainment value at a funeral.

The Curmudgeon visits his Linked In page maybe twice a month, and on a recent visit he found the following job posting as something that some idiot there thought might be right up his alley:

Director, Fan StrategyPhiladelphia 76ers

Job description

Position Summary: As a fan strategist, communications planning is your strength. You combine behavioral and psychographic insights, in-depth channels expertise, and platform innovation to both inspire marketing campaigns and develop custom media strategies. Data is the driver and delivering engagement is the goal. You are responsible for promoting data-enhanced decision making throughout the organization by delivering inspiring creative briefs.

In this position, you are in the know of the latest media trends and are continuously hungry to stay ahead of the ad-tech and new media space. You have strong knowledge of both digital and traditional media planning, which is all used to aid the development of strategic plans for teams and proactively brings innovative ideas to the table that help drive our businesses.

Collaboration is key, and it’s used to develop best-in-class campaign management, working cohesively with internal teams, partners and vendors. Analyze and optimize campaigns in real-time and work in partnership with other internal stake holders to deliver findings/reports.

This position generally requires that work be performed from the Philadelphia 76ers corporate offices in Camden, NJ.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following:

Act as the organization’s thought leader for fan marketing communications.

Lead and develop the annual fan marketing communications plan for teams, and fine tune the communications planning process.

Conduct market research on media consumption patterns for different markets and audiences around the world.

Take high-level communications objectives and identify how a team should behave in different cultural spaces and platforms.

Concept and develop culturally-relevant connection ideas that live in media environments.

Mine client and consumer data in collaboration with analytics team members to uncover insights and inform decision-making.

Work with senior team members to develop research methodology using various tools and platforms.

Hold creative briefings and work-sessions to develop new ecosystem-driven and innovative ideas.

Prepare and deliver presentations to teams with your media findings and recommendations.

5-7 years’ experience at a major, top-tier agency, sports team, lifestyle brand, or in data strategy function at a large consumer-facing brand.

Passion for sports & entertainment.

Must be a self-starter, detail-oriented and work well under pressure.

Effective written and verbal communications skills.

Ability to write and deliver persuasive presentations is critical.

Strong quantitative and analytical skills.

Ability to interpret ongoing research reports, guide and partner with analysts on segmentation and market sizing studies, utilizing their findings to inform communications recommendations.

Incredible work ethic and eager to dig into the details.

Understanding of Omniture, Sysomos, Affinio, Salesforce, and similar analytics tools.

Strong intellectual curiosity.

Passion for sports and growing fan engagement.

Travel Requirements

May be required to travel on rare occasions (<5% travel); trips may require air travel and/or overnight stay for one or more nights. Additional trips working at the NJ Devils/Prudential Center offices in Newark, NJ.

Physical Demands

This position requires the ability to lift up to 10 pounds.

Certifications

None Required
Please submit cover letter with resume upon applying.

Is this nothing short of complete confirmation that the people who run the Philadelphia 76ers are out of their ever-lovin’ minds?

Start at the beginning: the job title. “Director, Fan Strategy.”

Seriously? “Director, Fan Strategy”?

Next you have the following excerpt from the job description:

You combine behavioral and psychographic insights, in-depth channels expertise, and platform innovation to both inspire marketing campaigns and develop custom media strategies. Data is the driver and delivering engagement is the goal. You are responsible for promoting data-enhanced decision making throughout the organization by delivering inspiring creative briefs.

Some pretty creative briefs

Does that even MEAN anything?

And those “creative briefs” – are they BVDs or Fruit of the Looms?

And what kind of hubris went into this job responsibility?

Conduct market research on media consumption patterns for different markets and audiences around the world.

Media consumption patterns…around the world? The Curmudgeon wants some of whatever THESE folks are smoking.

And then there’s this one:

Take high-level communications objectives and identify how a team should behave in different cultural spaces and platforms.

Say whaaaaaat?

And this:

Concept and develop culturally-relevant connection ideas that live in media environments.

Wait: “concept” is now a verb? The Curmudgeon never got the memo!

Media ENVIRONMENTS?

If he didn’t have so much to say about this drivel The Curmudgeon would say this utterly ridiculous job description leaves him utterly speechless.

But it confirms his belief that there is something seriously defective about the soul-less people who own this basketball team.

For now, The Curmudgeon will continue to root for the 76ers to lose all 82 of their games every year and for their paid attendance for their 41 home games to be zero and wait for the people who own this team, who care not a whit about sports or competition or their fans, to tire of playing with their billion-dollar toy and finally sell the team.